Working at a new venue: Salford City Stadium

It’s always a bit of a nervous thrill to work on an event at a new venue. Today I hosted a conference for my client the ICAEW at Salford City Stadium. My friend Andrea Wolfendale, the events manager at Insider, has told me she rated it and the facilities were good.

The layout of the long room was with the stage lengthways, which I always prefer. As it is a stadium there is a large frontage to the pitch, just like The Point at Old Trafford cricket ground. It makes for a dynamic backdrop, but the trick is to adjust the blinds to ensure the screens are properly visible. This was very important for this educational conference, which the ICAEW always ensure has good quality supporting material.

There was another aspect to the event worth mentioning, the sound. Having a decent desk is vital, especially when you have speakers who don’t project and need levels adjusting. We could have done with an extra tie mic, but the support from Humphries Audio was first rate.

The City of Manchester Business Awards – and some general points on presenting awards

My last awards presentation job was in March hosting the City of Manchester Business Awards for Downtown, of whom I am chairman in Manchester. It seems a good opportunity today to remember seven golden rules I have which I implemented at this event and many others over the years, such as the Manchester Young Professionals Awards (pictured).

1. It’s not about you – the stars of the show are the people coming up to get an award. Be confident, have authority, but don’t hog the stage and project your personality all over the event. And don’t tell jokes.

2. On no account be sleazy or flirty with women on stage, swear or remove articles of clothing. This is the most toe-curling thing you can do. As these are business awards making comments and drawing attention to how someone looks is a massive show of disrespect for their abilities as a business person.

3. Let everyone know how the winners were chosen – so many awards lack credibility. Rightly or wrongly they are seen as a sop to sponsors. Making efforts to explain exactly how the awards were won is essential.

4. Make the winners and shortlisted feel special. This is an important occasion for them, it matters. Make sure you congratulate them, discourage triumphalism, encourage humility. Make eye contact and shake hands with them. And get their names and company names right. Check everything.

5. Keep a pace to the event. There’s a thin line between rattling through categories too fast and making everyone else there engaged. The important time to get this right is at the script stage. Edit and tune the script, check everything. If there’s time, encourage a winner to say a few words of thanks, but not if they seem intoxicated. The very best way is to do a short question and answer with a handheld microphone. You can always politely remove it if they’re rambling.

6. Never tell the audience to shush. I’ve made this mistake once and it just makes things worse. If people are talking then there are many more devices to get round this. You don’t have to demand they are quiet. It’s their night too – help them enjoy it.

7. Enjoy it. Be warm, be natural, but above all have fun. I’ve seen highly paid professional comedians and public figures treat the whole thing as a chore. This is so disrespectful to everyone there. Instead, show how much fun you are having by sharing in the joy of others. Remember it’s a celebration.

I say all of this because of some feedback I had from the Downtown Manchester event. I took it in good stead, it was basically comparing my role as an awards host that night with my interviewing style when I interviewed Fred Done on stage a couple of years ago. It’s chalk and cheese. That was about Fred and me having a chat and making him shine; just me and him. Awards are so very different. I actually don’t want anyone to remember too much of what I do at an awards. I want them to remember the winners, like the woman in the picture above, Joanne Dennis-Jones from Deloitte.

Lord Andrew Adonis – interview for Downtown 26 April 2013

Me with Lord Andrew Adonis

I’ve mentioned a few times how I prepare for interviews, and how I like to make the subject comfortable and the audience engaged. I tried a new technique at this event. I listed a series of questions I was going to ask him if the audience weren’t forthcoming. This served two purposes as well as the obvious and literal one of getting sensible relevant questions. But my possibles all contained some biographical knowledge about him. The questions were of a slightly impertinent and gossipy character – give us an example of a Blair-Brown row, David Miliband and Ed, writing for the FT, switching from the LibDems to Labour. They were intended to get people thinking about him and what he was all about and was a nice alternative to reading out his biography. The fact that I could have reverted to them hopefully made him feel I was reasonably well informed and interested in him. They also reminded the audience that the very fact I didn’t just go off on a biographical whimsy and talked about relevant issues to Manchester, education and transport showed that I was serious.

A blog about the actual event is here on my Downtown Chairman’s blog.

Downtown Show Me The Money seminars – February 2013

Downtown in Business held three seminars in different cities – Manchester, Preston and Leeds (pictured) where we discussed how businesses can access finance in a world where the banks aren’t lending like they used to.

Off the agenda was bank bashing, not because we’re sucking up to them or anything, but because it’s counter productive.

Here was my challenge as an event host – cover quite technical subjects and keep everyone in the audience onside.

Sometimes it’s a tricky line to tread. Finance professionals – like any professional group – have their own acronyms and jargon. You assume the audience know something of balance sheets, factoring, fixed charges and VCTs, because they run businesses and want to learn something new. That’s why they’ve come along. But equally you can’t lapse straight into all this because some speakers know what’s what. As a journalist I always tried to present information in a clear way – always explaining acronyms and terms of reference. Same goes for events. You can’t stop speakers every two minutes to clarify a basic point. You can’t present this kind of material in a Ladybird style either.

All the panellists at all three events were top drawer. Some of them I’ve worked with before – Mark Fahey of the London Stock Exchange, and Paul Taberner at Enterprise Ventures are both really compelling speakers, as is Steve Charnock of Seneca Partners. The really pleasant surprises were Helen Clayton of Deloitte and Melanie Hird of Seneca, not just because the latter two are super smart women leading the way in a man’s world either. Both had excellent delivery and a real understanding of finance from everyone’s point of view – banks, businesses, suppliers, investors in a business. My job is to give them the time and space to explain themselves.

How do you judge whether the balance was struck right? Sometimes people tell you, but sometimes you have to read the expressions and body language. A couple of very young journalists from Huddled came along and gave the Manchester 4 stars out of 5. They weren’t too baffled by any jargon. And the more experienced finance people gave us very positive direct feedback that they’d got a lot out of the event.

Growth Accelerator – partner event in Yorkshire – February 2013

I was delighted to don the purple GrowthAccelerator tie and get back on the road to promote this fantastic business service. The first event was in Rotherham, the next day I was back on the road and up with the lark in Leeds. Both events had a real energy about them and a real rapport between the panel members who I did interviews with. I’ve added insights from them to a blog on the GrowthAcclerator website on international trade tips.

Talk Social – 8th of February 2013

The panel at the Talk Social event at the Lowry Hotel on the 8th of February, picture by Richard Venables.

I was suitably inspired by Martin Vander Weyer’s turn of verse at the previous event. So, I summed up the morning of debate at the Talk Social event with a rhyme of my own. I hope it gets across something of the day. The hashtag talksocial sums things up very well.

Putting social into talk

There was a bomb alert on Portland Street,

I read that on a GMP Tweet,

It’s the channel they use most round our way,

But it needs to be updated three times a day,

The worst you can do is saying nowt,

Or worse still, kicking the interns out,

When they run your Twitter, or your Facebook page,

They’ll soon use that as an outlet of rage,

But measuring this stuff is an expensive art,

How does CAT translate to the shopping cart?

But if there’s one clear message from here at Dearman’s Walk,

It’s that social media is social, and it’s good to talk.

 

Liberty 5th birthday party

listen to ‘Michael Taylor on Liberty’s fifth birthday.’ on Audioboo

Here’s an audioboo of me at the Liberty Pensions 5th birthday party at the National Football Museum. It was such a terrific occasion, the guest speakers were me and Martin Vander Weyer of the Spectator, who really impressed with his rendition of his poem about the financial crisis. Inspiring stuff.